Exposed: Photography & the Classical Nude

Overview

Inspiration to Ghandi, and art scholar, John Ruskin was famously said to have been shocked on his wedding night by how his different his wife's real body was from those of the marble statues he studied. While this story may exaggerate its detail, it's true that the divide between artistic ideal and real bodies is often a big one. For critic Kenneth Clarke, the idealisation of nudity was what made it art. But in the words of Greg Wise: "Real life is wrinkles and smells." If you get to Sydney University early for A Night in the Quad, you'll be able to make up your own mind. Down one side of the picturesque main quadrangle is the Nicholson Museum, which for the duration of the Sydney Festival is running Exposed: Photography & the Classical Nude.

Exposed fuses together one hundred images of ancient and modern views of nudes, statues and classical methods of filthy art — exploring the connections and differences of images of the body in classical sculpture, to the work of less ancient photographers like Max Dupain and Henry Fox Talbot. And while the exhibition is neither puritan nor prurient, there should be enough in it to give you ideas of your own.

Note: pages linked to in this piece contain artistic nudity and may be slightly NSFW. Image of Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper statue by dorothya.